It's not increasingly bizarre, really, if you just allow for the possibility of one thing:
There's something else worse that they know could be in such a book, but isn't yet, and it is so bad that it is worth doing this.
Perhaps they know that Wynn-Williams could have put it in the book and didn't. Perhaps they know that someone else — someone else British, say? — could write such things in a book and so far hasn't.
Once you assume their motivation is grounded in real fear, it gets easier to see why this isn't bizarre at all; it's inevitable.
I am assuming you are referring to Nick Clegg. The British are very easy to cow and bankrupt thanks to egregious libel laws that put the burden of proof on the defendant. They also have super injunctions allowing wrongdoers like Trafigura to silence whistleblowers and journalists.
The article mentions:
> But I think they've decided that this is a price worth paying, because:
> a) They've done even worse things since Wynn-Williams parted ways with the company; and
> b) They're laying off thousands of workers because their giant bet on AI has been a flop, leaving them with a massive cash crunch; and
> c) By destroying Sarah Wynn-Williams, they can terrorize all those thousands of bitter ex-employees into silence about the even graver sins the company has committed.
I remember during the Google anti-trust case that there was example after example of "people behaving badly". Most of these were tools in the anti-competitive bucket but it does make you wonder about the things that happen that were never committed to code nor written down.
> someone else British, say?
I genuinely don't know what this is in reference to but it's notable Christopher Wylie got suspended on FB
Which is obviously more of a priority than any number of horrible things you could report which never get taken down
Employee - Large organization.
Mosquito - Human.
You don't swat a mosquito out of fear, you swat it out of preventing a minor nuisance.
A whistleblower is a mosquito that's bitten a human. The most likely outcome is an imminent, violent swat, resulting in career destruction.
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The article's theory is similar:
> But I think they've decided that this is a price worth paying, because: [...] c) By destroying Sarah Wynn-Williams, they can terrorize all those thousands of bitter ex-employees into silence about the even graver sins the company has committed.